Persephone
by Lynyrd Lionheart
Summary: Skye holds the diviner and enters the city and finally understands... everything.


**AN: This is a weird little idea that wouldn't leave me alone until I wrote it. So I did.**

**Persephone**

_It started with a pomegranate and temptation_

_I made you a promise_.

The words echo, and Skye knows full well what Ward means. He had promised to reunite her with her father time and again, and now he was here to cash in. She stares at him down the length of her gun and considers her options.

Option One – put a bullet in Ward's head and let everyone die. Tempting in a way. It would feel satisfying, for all of ten seconds and a fiery death.

Option Two – go with him and put a bullet in her father's head. He's a monster. What he did to Tripp… Skye doesn't want to think about it, but she does. Because she's thinking about killing her own father and the part of her that's horrified by that thought wonders if her father is the only monster, and those thoughts lead straight down a dark path.

A dark path to Option Three – go with Grant and hold the Obelisk and see what it is that Raina keeps talking about. Find out what she is and what she'll become, and the thought isn't nearly as horrifying as it should be. Skye wonders what that says about her.

_Trust me_, Ward says, and she doesn't. She probably never will again… but she hands him his gun and follows Raina up the stairs. Part of her screams as she walks and tells her to turn back, but that part grows ever smaller with every step she takes until she reaches the top of the steps and Option One is no longer an option, and even Skye doesn't know which of the other two she'll ultimately choose.

_And she ate, knowing full well what the consequences would be_

Her father is surprisingly well dressed for a psycho, but the suit looks familiar in its style, and Skye wonders if he's purposely copying Coulson, or if he just wanted to look nice. She wonders if she should be flattered by this, but all she feels is confused.

She still doesn't know which option she'll ultimately choose, and staring into the eyes of the monster that gave her life isn't helping her make the choice.

He doesn't make her feel sick like she thought he would. Instead there's a feeling of recognition. She knows this man… because he's her father? Or because his monster speaks to the one within her?

"You're a monster," she says when he tries to connect with her. "Death follows where you go."

"Those are both true," he replies, no attempts to hide who or what he is in the face of her derision, and she doesn't quite know what to do with that.

_At what point does he stop being a monster_? It was poem that had become popular on the internet, the answer being _when you love him, of course_, but Skye wonders now if the truth isn't that you stop being a monster when you accept what you are.

She knows what he's capable of, yet she doesn't feel endangered in his company. She sits on the couch, and he joins her as well after a moment. They remain there, a distance of mere feet that might as well be miles between them, and Skye doesn't know what to say anymore.

"What happened to her?" she says at last, asking the question that's haunted her for as long as she can remember. "My mother?"

"They destroyed her," he replies, and there's that rage again, the rage that she knows could level cities. "They tore her to pieces."

She can picture it easily, a body torn apart. Hadn't it happened to her, being shot and slowly dying until the serum saved her again? She can picture her mother, being destroyed, and she thinks she understands why her father might have become a monster.

Or maybe she's just making excuses, because the thought of this woman she's never met being ripped apart? It makes her want to leave a path of bodies behind.

Option Two is slowly losing ground, being lost to the storm that surrounds Skye, the emotions that this man evokes in her with his mere presences and a few words. But without Option Two… her final option is terrifying. Terrifying and tempting and what does she do now?

"The Obelisk," she says at last, staring straight ahead, but she knows that she has his attention. "How does it work?"

_Despite what the stories would have you believe she was no sweet innocent_

__"This our chance. To see what we become."

Skye says nothing in response to Raina's reverent words. She is no blind believer, but let Raina keep hers. One of them should feel confidence in this path their forging together.

The Obelisk – _The Diviner_, that's what her father called it – is held tightly in Skye's hand, and she feels herself fall easily into the role of operative as the three of them make their way into the depths of the city. Ward has been left behind. He wasn't worthy her father said, although Ward hadn't seemed particularly put out by that.

"I'll see you when you come back," he had said to her.

"Go to hell," had been her succinct reply.

He hadn't seemed particularly bothered by that, either, and it made Skye wonder if he knew something she didn't. But who knew with Ward? He had serious issues and a mommy complex (or was it a daddy complex? Maybe a sibling complex? It was tough to know, when someone came from that much crazy) and Skye didn't have time to deal with his unique brand of crazy. Not when she was dealing with her father's. And Raina's.

"Can you feel it?" her father asks, bringing her back to the presence, and Skye nearly rolls her eyes at the reverence in his voice, because can she feel _what_?

And then she does.

It's a humming in her bones, in her nerve ends, travelling from her center to fingertips and toes. The Obelisk – _Diviner_ – seems to vibrate in her grip, and without thinking Skye begins to walk. She doesn't know where, only that the Diviner is showing her the way.

She finally understands Raina's blind faith.

_She never set out to be Hades' wife_

"This is it," Raina breathes, and Skye still says nothing. What does Raina know of what it is? She's not the one holding the Diviner. She can't possible see the world as it's being shown to Skye.

There is so much _potential_. Potential in her, potential humming in the air around her. The world glows with potential, and Skye knows that it's there for her. For her to take, her to give, for her to use as she sees fit, and Raina can't possibly comprehend what that is.

_She's not worthy_.

The thought is quick and fleeting, but an echo of it stays as Skye walks into the cavernous room. It's meant to be a throne room, a place to make offering to a King, but there is no King here, not any more.

There is Skye and the Diviner, and she stands in the middle, next to that altar meant for sacrifice and she looks up and the world spins, so she spins with it and laughs. Raina, poor, foolish Raina who had been so reverent and determined to see what she would become could have never guessed her destiny.

She was right. This is where she was meant to be… but she was never meant to be great. The only thing Raina is meant to become is ashes – a footnote on the path of Skye's greatness.

Skye laughs again and for the first time she looks at her companions. Her father is watching her, his eyes alight with pleasure. He knows that she has seen, and he's proud. But Raina… at first she smiles, and Skye just continues to watch her. To watch her and wait.

The smile slowly fades and realization dawns.

"No," the woman breathes out. "No. I was chosen. The Diviner… it _chose_ me!"

"Yes," Skye agrees still smiling. "It did."

Just not for the destiny Raina had thought, but that isn't Skye's problem, and she's already looked away as the Diviner claims the girl in the flower dress. She steps around the Altar to look at the throne. It's old and crumbling with time, but with the Diviner's help, Skye can see it as it's meant to be, and it's beautiful.

"It's time," her father says, and Skye can feel his warmth at her back.

"It's time," she echoes, turning to him. She allows him to kiss her forehead, his sacrifice is deserving of at least that much, and then they turn their separate ways.

Skye steps to the throne.

Her father hoists himself onto the Altar.

When Skye turns and takes her rightful place on the throne, all that remains of him is ashes.

_But Persephone did want to be Queen_

It takes them longer than she would have expected, for her team to join her.

They were probably nervous, afraid they would be killed by this city, because they weren't worthy. It wasn't their fault of course. How were they to know that Skye and the Diviner had already become one. That the unworthy were no longer determined by the whims of the city, but solely by _her_.

They walk in slowly, guns up, treading over Raina's remains without ever realizing it. Simmons pauses by the altar, her eternal curiosity making her wonder about the ashes. Skye wonders what her response will be, when she finds out it's her father.

"Skye?" Coulson asks slowly, and Skye smiles serenely down at him. She notices that Ward is with them, Lance's gun poking him in the back, and she waits for that familiar rise of anger and hurt to come. It doesn't.

Instead, she understands.

Now that she is free from the bonds that once held her so firmly in place, she finally understands Ward and what he had been striving for all this time.

He will never know the truth of the Diviner, will never know _true_ freedom, and Skye could almost pity him for that.

"What is this Skye?" this time it's May, her face stoic, but her eyes glittering with a hundred emotions. Skye had once found her so difficult to read, but now she can see the tempest that rests within Melinda May so easily. She's a storm waiting to explode out of its shell, and Skye fingers the Diviner, knowing that she could so easily make her set that storm free.

"This is my destiny," Skye says instead, allowing May her peace in her ignorance. Skye has found her peace through knowing all, but she knows that May would not be able to find the same.

"Put the Diviner down, Skye," Coulson says.

"Why would I do that?" Skye is genuinely puzzled, and she pities Coulson, for not realizing what it is Skye has found. For not knowing with the same absolute certainty that he has found his destiny.

"Skye, the Diviner is making you ill," Simmons says, and Skye simply shakes her head, pitying her scientist friend as well.

"I've never been better, Gemma. You knew" – she meets Ward gaze, and notices the others shooting him quick, angry looks – "you knew what I was meant to become."

Ward doesn't look as cocky as he did the last time she saw him. Instead he looks frightened, almost ill.

"Not this," he says, shaking his head, as though somehow he could lodge the image of her on her throne, in her place, out of his mind with the motion. "Skye, listen to them."

Skye feels such disappointment then, because of them all, she had thought Ward might understand. But if he doesn't…

She sighs, very nearly slumping on her throne.

"I think I'll truly grieve for you all."

They raise their guns, but Sky has already turned away from them. Gotten to her feet and is walking out of the throne room. Their dust flutters behind her, mingling together and coating the floor, but she has already forgotten them.

The Diviner still has more for her to see.

**AN: So, obviously I know this isn't how it will go down. But that's what fanon is for – exploring those paths the show won't (or in this case, really can't) take. Let me know what you think.**


End file.
